No one knows who this sculpture represents…
/So it’s probably a vampire/
The image Queen Of The Night, a terracotta relief in clay, is thought to date to 1950 BCE. Some vampire-oriented media, including this one, have referred to the woman in the carving as Lilith.
That’s a hard sell. Given where she was found and the context, she’s probably a goddess or demoness of non-Judaian origin. There is a demon in Babylonian mythology named “Lilitu”, which is at least close to “Lilith”, but that’s like saying Jerry Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis are the same person.
It seems like the majority of scholars think it’s Ishtar.
She’s most often called the Burney Relief. But I’m going with Queen Of The Night because, as the Ancient History Encyclopedia notes:
As sacred prostitution was practiced throughout Mesopotamia, the historian Thorkild Jacobsen believed that the plaque formed a part of a shrine in a brothel. Dr. Collon notes, however, that “if this were so, it must have been a very high-class establishment, as demonstrated by the exceptional quality of the piece”
Where exactly she was found is in doubt. The carving was removed from somewhere in the area of Babylonia, everyone agrees, we just don’t know exactly where. So the Babylonian Bunny Ranch it is.
I don’t have a photoshop mock-up for “Best Little Whorehouse in Mesopotamia.” You’re welcome.
But there’s still a tenuous Lilith/vampire connection with the relief. She was originally painted red, smart people tell me. Was she bloody or just a Martian? I’m not sure, but it certainly is a credit to the showrunners on True Blood that they made their Lilith red as well.
Whoever she is, she’s currently on display at the British Museum. If you’re in London and like browsing antiquities stolen from their native soil, it may be worth your time.
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Image credits: Shutterstock, Columbia Pictures, HBO, the British Museum
